The Mindset You Need to Be a Boss That Gets Results

You need to master a lot of skills to be a great manager. You need to know how to coach employees, how to handle conflict, how to delegate, etc.

But, being a great manager starts with having the “results mindset,” Instructor Todd Dewett said in his LinkedIn Learning course, Managing for Results. If you don’t adopt this mindset, it’s nearly impossible to manage for results, he said.

So what does the “results mindset” look like? Well, Dewett said it comes down to these six principles:

1. Love the craft of managing.

A chief task for a manager is developing their employees; and yet we know a manager sets the example for the rest of their team. Hence, if a manager wants their employees to learn and grow, they themselves need to learn and grow at becoming a better manager.

This means having a mentor, going to management seminars, watching eLearning courses and talking with other managers. Not only will this make you a better boss, it’ll also inspire your team to “love” their craft and work to improve themselves as well.

2. Hold yourself and your team to high standards.

You, as a manager, want to hold your team to the highest standard they are capable of achieving. But, for that to work, you need to hold yourself to your highest standard.

Specifically, if you ask people to work harder and hit aggressive goals, you should also be working harder and hitting your own aggressive goals, Dewett said.

3. Have a modest respect for bureaucracy.

Modest is the key word here. A great manager can neither ignore bureaucracy altogether, nor can they follow it blindly.

Most of the time, managers should follow the rules of the organization. But, sometimes a manager needs to break those rules when they are suboptimal.

A caveat – the stronger you and your team perform, the quicker you’ll be able to cut through red tape, Dewett said. So, before you start “bending” any rules, you need to prove yourself first.

4. Broaden your mindset beyond your team.

A great manager understands more than just the needs of their team. They also understand the needs of their boss, cross-functional partners and the organization as a whole, Dewett said.

If a boss focuses only on their own needs, they’ll alienate other departments and ultimately underperform. By seeing the fuller picture, a manager will preside over a more strategic team that focuses on the most important tasks.

5. Adopt a process mentality.

Really, any team is guided by a set of processes. Your goal as a manager is to determine the weakest processes and see how you can improve those.

Say, for example, you have two team members who work together completing one piece of work. There’s little collaboration; one person works on it to start and then hands it off to the other person for execution. This is likely a broken process – it’s better for those two team members to collaborate earlier to come up with a solution that better fits both of their needs.

You, as a manager, need to identify that bad process and fix it.

6. Go above and beyond.

Great teams go above and beyond. But a team will only do that if their boss sets the example by going above and beyond himself or herself.

That can mean longer hours. But it’s also about never saying “that’s not my job”, helping colleagues whenever possible and always acting with integrity, Dewett said.

Bottom line, there are many skills a manager needs to master to get the most out of their team. But those are useless unless the manager models the behavior they want their team to adopt.